... and missed half my pregnancy.
Honestly that’s how it feels,
“FFFFFFFFFFFFWWWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww”
“What the hell was that?!”
“Oh that? That was your pregnancy, here’s your daughter”
I feel like the milestones are hitting me one after another and the latest one is we have now completed 24 weeks. That is my favourite milestone of all because it’s the time at which my daughter starts to be treated by the outside world as a proper potential person.
The way I felt about the last few weeks is, I imagine, similar to the way people feel when they reach the £500,000 question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The closer to 24 weeks, the higher the jeopardy and you just want everything to hang together for just those few more days and weeks until some mythical box is ticked and yes, your child is now viable.
It actually makes no real difference, there are babies who survive happily before 24 weeks and babies who don’t survive long after 24 weeks has passed, but that stupid arbitrary numbers is the key to buying your child a chance at life at the hands of the medical profession and that makes it important.
I remember feeling the same way about Alfie which in hindsight is quite amusing considering how long my pregnancy lasted. I also note the stark contrast between my pregnancies in that this time I have done nothing to prepare for this birth.
I’m reliably informed that comes from having a toddler in the house.
I think I should also point out that unlike in the post above, there have so far been no knitted gifts arriving from the land of Gibraltaria. I point this out because my daughter is all “where’s my damn waffle fries??” and it’s my ribs that are taking the beating. So you, Auntie Michie, get on it.
In actual fact that is no joke, by ribs ARE taking a pounding at the moment which is simultaneously great because it means my little girl is head down most of the time and bad because it bloody hurts. Considering I have an anterior placenta this time I am shocked at how strong this baby is, and how much of a pounding my belly is taking. I don’t ever remember being able to watch my belly jump around last time, but I can now.
She is also a total daddy’s girl and every time Keith puts a hand near my belly she’s all KA-BLAMO!!!! ... sweet that he finally gets to feel a baby kicking him, not so sweet when it happens at 5am after Keith has rolled over and cuddled into me. She kicked him so hard this morning he actually half woke up and asked if what he’d just felt was a kick.
No my sweet, I was just having a clandestine game of Buckaroo.
I also haven’t managed to take or post one single belly shot this pregnancy either, but I feel the time has come. And since Keith was too busy lamenting the end of the space mission to take a photo for me, I had to cobble one together this morning with the aid of a mirror and barely opened eyes.
As my final thought for the day, I’m strangely drawn to researching Kangaroo Care this pregnancy. No idea why. But I saw this article today and I thought I would share it as a good introduction to something that I hope will become common practice in the care of premie babies. Like all good ideas this one feels like nothing more than good common sense.
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